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| I, Jamie Weinhauer Martin, will share my story so that you might
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| understand why I have determined there is a governance performance
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| problem within the State of Arizona’s Maricopa County. I suspect this
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| governance issue exists in other Arizona Counties based on my
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| conversations with people living in other counties. This issue may be
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| more widespread than I think. That said, I have contained this story to
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| my experiences with Maricopa County issues, which included interfaces
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| with State and County personnel.
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| The story is long and convoluted. The issues are many and complex.
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| I have tried to accommodate the interests of various readers by
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| organizing the material in a way that is, I hope, comfortable for you,
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| the reader. There are two separate documents that interface with each
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| other to tell the complete story. The first document, this story,
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| explains how data was obtained. The second document, the governance
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| piece, explains why I believe the data suggests a governance problem.
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| My story is told from the first-person perspective. I will be sharing
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| the content of some of my conversations (verbally and digitally) with
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| government personnel. I am intentionally withholding the names of
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| government employees (excluding elected officials) to prevent unintended
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| consequences. During my interfaces, I always felt like the employee was
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| trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, doing the right thing from
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| his/her perspective may be the wrong thing from the citizen’s
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| perspective. Many conversations were frustrating, but my goal is to fix
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| the processes, not blame people.
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| The separate document addressing governance gaps was far more difficult
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| to develop than my first-hand account. Normally, CAP investigations are
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| conducted from within the organizational entity where there is
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| unrestrained access to policies, procedures and personnel to determined
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| what happened and why. As a member of the public, I was an outsider
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| looking into the entity trying to collect as much information as
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| possible to make a fair assessment of performance.
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| I questioned whether I could judge their performance based on my
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| experience; I had a lot of CAP experience. However, that didn’t seem
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| ethical and could be disregarded as being biased by someone that didn’t
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| agree with my conclusions.
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| I selected the Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government
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| (May 2025) as the benchmark for my assessment of Maricopa County
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| governance. The Green Book as it is more commonly called is published by
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| the United States Government Accountability Office. This standard was
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| created as a result of the Federal Managers’ Financial Integrity Act of
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| 1982 (FMFIA). More information about the Green Book is provided in Part
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| 2 of my story, relating specifically to governance.
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| I will try to identify a specific governance gap in my story by
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| providing a cross-reference to Part 2 of my story, which is organized by
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| Green Book principles. I may miss a few cross references or you may find
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| performance gaps that I didn’t recognize. Please let me know if you find
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| a gap that I had missed; I will consider revising the governance
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| document to show the new gap.
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| There is a similar cross reference in Part 2, the Governance Gaps.
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| Should like to understand the context of a governance performance gap
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| found in Part 2, a cross-reference to Part 1, my story, will be
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| provided.
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| I hope you will appreciate the effort taken to make the story easier to
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| follow will also allowing you to understand the context of the
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| identified performance gaps.
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